P7, Battle of Britain survivor,Messerschmidt killer and film star. The oldest aircraft on the BBMF and only flying survivor of the Battle of Britain. She's seen combat, film stars and been shot down, quite an action filled career...

The next bunch were taken from my first trip away with the BBMF. These are all from Southend, the quality isn't great as I had to take the pics during the few quiet moments we had while prepping the planes for flight.

MK and LF sat on the pan. This was before the locals realised that we were about!

I'm surprised you don't have a Moth of some description floating around.

Not good enough for conversion training???

Edit: (Or is it that open cockpit thing...)

It's probably a number of reasons, I'm not exactly sure but I'd guess at the following:

It's an open cockpit so it's noisier. The Chipmunk is closer in performance to a Hurri/Spit than a Tiger Moth (still well off though). It's another type of aircraft, we already operate 5 different types (or nine if you include the different marks of Spitfire). The Chipmunk can almost recreate the forward view from a Spitfire if the pilot is in the rear seat. There were probably more Chipmunks about than Tiger Moths (or similar) at the time we acquired them.

The Chipmunk is a nice enough aircraft, a bit of a throwback in some ways. She's fabric covered so the underwing access panels are actually zip fasteners.

The Dak, returning home from Eindhoven. She went across to the Netherlands as part of the anniversary of Market Garden. There was a group of Dutch visitors around BBMF today including a gentleman who was living in Arnhem at the time of the battle. He was quite pleased to see the Dakota, and the Lanc, and a three Spitfire flypast as well as the other two Spitfires on their own.